300x night rig with some custom carbon goodies

[Dustin Mustangs]

I had a ton of fun building this and I think it turned out pretty nice so I thought I would make a little build thread for you guys. IMO there should be more of these in the Night Flying Forum!

I sourced all the lights from Perfect Regulators (Night blade conversion kit and LED kit for canopy / tail). On 3s voltage the green canopy lights were a little too bright imo compared to the red canopy lights and both color blade lights so I dimmed them down with some help from this thread using a linear voltage regulator from Digikey that drops them to 9v.

I needed this kit to be removable and I also wanted to have 'tail lights' pointing straight back so, after some serious head scratching, I decided to make some custom parts out of carbon for the tail to facilitate this. Certainly not the easiest solution but fabricating with composites is another one of my hobbies and it seemed like a pretty good use of some carbon scraps I had laying around. Anyway, here are some pics of the process, I will add pics of the final result later...


First up, compression molding the carbon with some 'garage' technology:

Flat sheet stock for the tail fin was done with 4 layers (2k twill carbon and epoxy resin used throughout) laid up between 2 sheets of melamine with paint cans on top for extra weight.




The 'boom saddle' is a U channel shape and was formed over a cabinet door that just happened to be the size I needed. Only two layers used here as this part will be inherintly stronger due to its shape.




And the horizontal stabilizer with 'tail lights' was made with 2 layers formed over a waxed 2x4 I cut at a 120 degree angle. The green rubber stretched over it to help hold it to the mold is a resistive band my dad had for rehabilitating a torn rotator cuff. If you haven't picked up on it yet, I am a use what you got around kind of guy...

[Dustin Mustangs]

Carbon right out of molds, marked up, and ready to be trimmed.




Trimmed pieces ready for lights.

[Dustin Mustangs]

Final product!







Boom saddle and horizontal stabilizer is one unit that is attached with the normal two screws and zipties at either end.




Canopy / tail harness is run off the balance tap. One lead to the canopy for green that is regulated and then one for the tail and one for red on the canopy, both unregulated.

[Dustin Mustangs]

Everyone is prettier in the dark!

[Epoweredrc]

NICE! i would like to do a night heli rig but just so far not. have done a few airplanes

[Dustin Mustangs]

Thanks! Like I mentioned, it was really fun putting it together but now the reality has set in that I actually need to night fly this badboy. Time to sack up I suppose...

BTW, I forgot to mention above that this conversion only added 13g over my typical (aftermarket canopy) weight. Seems pretty decent considering there are 106 LEDs in all.

[Drivinfast247]

That's crazy!

[Dustin Mustangs]

I had a daylight shakedown run with this setup yesterday and everything went really smooth. My blade batteries did slide down a bit, as others are reporting, but I didn't notice any vibes on account of it. Surprisingly, they moved back to their original position once stationary for a while. They are acting a little inconsistent capacity wise (hopefully due to break in), but it seems they are good for 15 minutes or so per charge. The canopy and tail LEDs took right around 10mAH per minute out of my main pack.

[Scream]

Wow DM!

Well thought out and completed design sir! I'm really loving the tail boom shroud!

IF you get bored one day, it would be really cool to see if a slightly longer saddle that could cover the whole boom would remove the need for boom braces!
Those therabands last about 10 years before they get tired, im sure you'll find tons of other things it can help you with

Well done Dustin!

[Dustin Mustangs]

First night flight on this kit (and for me) tonight!

Huge pucker factor but I settled down pretty quick once it was airborne. All went well save for my dSLR cutting off at 0:44 for some reason and missing all the action. Oh well, at least I didn't put her in! Now to celebrate, I am stoked!!!